Athens snapshots: G

‘We live in a country that’s always striving to find its new identity’

Returning to Athens for another snapshot, we were happy to find a copy of Eye 74 sharing space with the studio’s own design work, writes John Ridpath.

G. was founded in 2006 by Mihalis Georgiou and Alexandros Gavrilakis. Both believe that the Greek capital provides a unique environment for designers: ‘Athens is a city with vast and contradictory visual references, an eastern-western mix that will never bore you... We live in a country that’s always striving to find its new identity so it’s inevitable to see diversity in our design scene’. We spoke to G. about some of their recent work.

Top and below: Cover for +Design. ‘We were asked to design the cover of the leading design magazine in Greece. Instead of using another beautiful photo or illustration we thought it will be more interesting to share with the readers our studio’s daily to-do-list!’

Above and below: Ivan Hair Salon identity. ‘Based on Ivan’s working environment, the new logo is visually “scissored out”. We also used a special material (“FLOK”) instead of ink, so the new salon card feels like it is made out of hair.’

Above and below: Design Walk identity. ‘We designed the visual identity of the Design Walk 2010, following the thematic contradiction “functional vs. decorative”. All the applications are double sided. The functional side is using two classical fonts (Bodoni & Helvetica) and communicate the event without any decorative elements. On the other side, we used the same structure and fonts, placed on a vintage wallpaper-found on the Athenian district of Psyrri - home to the Design Walk.’

Above and below: IamExpat identity ‘ΙamExpat is an online resource platform covering the needs of expatriates who wish to socialize, share ideas and information as well as create and evaluate business opportunities in the Netherlands. The IamExpat identity is an amalgam of different colours, shapes and sizes. It depicts the multiple segments of the Dutch expatriate community’

Eye, the international review of graphic design, is a quarterly journal you can read like a magazine and collect like a book. It’s available from all good design bookshops and at the online Eye shop, where you can order subscriptions, single issues and classic collections of themed back issues.